Bye bye February
AMSTERDAM - The days are grey. February never was my favourite month of the year. Sometimes spring seems to say hello, but then we’re covered again under a big grey blanket of clouds. I hereby apologise to everyone with a birthday in February. Though I’m sure they’re sunny people, February sucks.
In the countryside the grey has still some charm to it. The landscape changes into a mysterious damp stage where you can only identify sheep by the blue paint sprayed onto their bums. But in the city this weather is just depressing. If only our grey pigeons had a bright green feather coat like their tropical cousins.
It doesn’t help that there’s more bad news about our climate. “Without immediate action global warmer is going to happen even faster than predicted so far”, was the gloomy warning from Chris Field, a scientist from the renowned Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Field thinks that CO2 safely stored away by trees in tropical rainforests and ice in the poles will be out in the open soon because of deforestation and melting ice. Brilliant. Apparently the amount of CO2 that will be released is going to be huge and therefore speed up global warming enormously. Great.
There you are with your good intentions. Your box with old paper to recycle, your LED lights and organic groceries. And you may even have the heating low (I’m sitting in a big jumper on the couch). But it may all be for nothing. My own little fight against global warming might be completely useless. We’re simply too late. There’s a big plastic island floating on the sea and our forests can’t suck up enough CO2. We’ve dug our own grave.
A bit later I cycle through the rain and think how we’re going to die. If we’re not able to save ourselves I hope we drown. I heard it’s quite an alright way to die. When my umbrella blows inside out for the tenth time and I’m treated to a huge splash of water from a big truck, I start to think I know how depressed people feel.
At home there’s a cat waiting for me at the doorstep. We stare at each other, both with wet hair. I rub her stripy little body dry with a towel. Purring, she shuts her eyes. My February depression is officially over!
